notjpl

4 ms·

1. 1.▲
   by notjpl 11y ago

   Arbitrary precision is not a valid answer: every multiplication doubles the number of mantissa bits. Starting with a 64-bit precision, after just 40 multiplications, you will have consumed 800 GB of RAM just for storing a single number, a
2. 2.▲
   by notjpl 11y ago

   Yeah, that doesn't surprise me in the least, many high-tech military systems have MTBF/MTTF of a few hours at best. Also, that's what you get when you try to do radar time computations using 24-bit fixed point in Ada. Back to
3. 3.▲
   by notjpl 11y ago

   I agree, that's a poor answer by NASA director and chief engineer. Here is a better answer: The precision used for calculations is dependent on the number of "steps" required to get to the final result. Roughly, for N repeate